Students in Social Justice 12 at Osoyoos Secondary School are running a food drive as a class project in which they are learning about poverty. (Richard McGuire photo)
Social justice students at Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) may not be able to solve all the world’s problems, but by tackling local poverty, they’re gaining skills they can apply in the wider world.
Recently students in Sarah Gilchrist’s Social Justice 12 class have been undertaking a food drive to gather food for the Osoyoos Food Bank prior to Christmas.
Through this project, the students have been learning about poverty in their own community.
Students are also working on their own social justice projects that focus on issues they are passionate about.
“The goal of doing the food drive within the class was to model an example of how to do an action project, how to organize it and all the little steps that you need to take to make it happen,” said Gilchrist, who is teaching the course for the first time this year.
The individual projects cover a range of issues from creating awareness of rattlesnakes as an endangered species to addressing mental health.
But the class food drive project has allowed the students to learn about poverty in Osoyoos.
The students have been collecting cans of food and cash donations from other OSS students at a table during the lunch break and through other events. In exchange, donors get their names put into a draw for prizes donated by local businesses.
“One of our biggest units we’ve done in our social justice class is learning about poverty,” said student Emma Fernandes. “We’ve learned that B.C. has the highest rate of child poverty, so we decided to do something in our community to get people to donate food, so children in our community will not be hungry.”
“It’s been crazy to see how poverty affects people,” added fellow student Tianna Morgan. “We just want to start small in our community and hopefully we will branch off later into a global sort of thing.”
Fernandes said the class has also learned about real-world problems and poverty by watching documentaries.
“I hope they get inspired,” said Gilchrist. “It’s about becoming more aware of issues that affect other people who are less fortunate than they are.”
The students attempted a food drive at Halloween, she said, but it was less successful than they hoped.
“We wanted to have a second crack at it,” she said. “We’re more organized now and we have more ideas. I think the kids have some fun ideas to engage the students to bring things in. Our communication has been better. We’ve had more posters and events.”
In addition to the lunchtime food drives in the school concourse, the students are also holding Monday movies in the theatre with holiday-themed TV and movie clip mashups.
The drama class plans a hilarious holiday-themed skit this Thursday. And there will be a chance to get photos taken with Santa at the Winter Formal Dance.
For each of these events, entry is a $2 donation or five cans of food.
Morgan said she expects the food to be provided to the food bank on the last day of classes before the Christmas break, Friday, Dec. 16.
The social justice class and the students’ individual projects, however, continue into January.
“They’re probably going to be working on them pretty hard in January to get them wrapped up,” said Gilchrist.
Although the course only runs for the first semester, Gilchrist hopes it leads to the revival of the Global Awareness Club for the remainder of the school year.
In the past, that club at the school has partnered with the Rotary Club of Osoyoos.
“We’re hoping to carry the momentum and get some kids to be part of the club and keep it going from February to June,” said Gilchrist. “There is still so much we can do like that within the school.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
